Football Helmets do not provide protection against concussions and traumatic brain injury

New York Times reporter, Alan Schwarz in his continuing award winning reporting of football helmet safety standards  and sports concussions reported in Sunday’s Times that the National Operating Committee on Standards for Athletic Equipment (NOCSAE) would attempt to devise standards that consider the multiple forces within the brain that that cause concussions, Oversight Group Vows to Pursue Updates to Football Helmet Standards.

This announcement follows concerns voiced by members of Congress as well as the Consumer Product Safety Commission that current standards are not scientifically valid and cause a false sense of safety in players.

The current standards only measure direct impacts to the helmet, sufficient to cause skull fractures and not the rotational forces when the brain moves within the skull which is a leading cause of concussions and traumatic brain injuries.

It is debatable whether a helmet can ever protect the brain from these dangerous rotational forces.  Parents and players need to know that helmets do not provide protection from all brain injuries and provide only minimal protection against the forces that can cause a concussion and brain damage.

According to the Times, David Halstead, Nocsae’s technical director and top expert on helmet physics, theorized that football concussions derived from forces too numerous and complex for helmets to protect against them any better than they currently do. He said that testing helmets against rotational forces “will not lead to a reduction” in concussions, adding, “We’ve got a lot of information, but we don’t know what to do next.”